The recent 51% attack on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain has sparked the debate of what is the best way to protect the blockchain and keep it attack free. While there are a lot of views on the topic that have surfaced over the past week, ETC contributor Tomaz Kariz has published a post on a medium that kind of defends the Ethereum Classic blockchain and states the attack is on the network participants.

What led to this Ethereum Classic attack, Network or people in the network?

According to Tomaz, it’s not the fault of the network that it went under the attack but it all starts with the way a node chose the real (longer) blockchain.

I just published why I think 51% attacks are not a failure of the network but rather an attack on network participants.https://t.co/hJyiuAIguy

The way Tomaz puts it in his post, it’s not only difficult but next to impossible to stop the double spending attack because the way the blockchain nodes picks up the blockchain and switches its search of the “real” blockchain. He further highlights the role of Probabilistic Transaction Finality in implementing the double spend attack. According to this thesis, Tomaz concludes,

“The 51% attack is not an attack on the network itself but rather on ‘naive’ network participants. Whenever we make a transaction we can decide the number of blocks we are willing to wait to ‘convince ourselves’ that the transaction is set in stone.”

In both Bitcoin and Ethereum chains, the transaction finality is merely probabilistic. However, even though it is probabilistic, with the current Bitcoin network hash rate you can be pretty sure that waiting for 30 blocks will give you a VERY nice guarantee that the transaction will stay on the chain.

He further adds,

“Ethereum Classic network was merely following the consensus rules and functioned correctly as designed. For better or worse, ETC doesn’t care if humans lost money.”

While Tomaz has put forward his viewpoint, a lot of crypto stakeholders believe that double spend attack and decentralization go hand in hand. Recently Charlie Lee of Litecoin also tweeted stating that if the coin hasn’t had a double spend attack it is probably centralized.

This is a thought-provoking observation. 🤔

By definition, a decentralized cryptocurrency must be susceptible to 51% attacks whether by hashrate, stake, and/or other permissionlessly-acquirable resources.

If Tomaz’s thesis is correct and this is how blockchains are designed to work, then its an indirect human error and not the problem of the blockchain. But no doubt the recent event has raised questions on the authenticity of both blockchain and especially on the POW consensus mechanism.

Do you agree with Tomaz’s view or it’s just a story prove Ethereum Classic innocent? Do let us know your views on the same.

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51% Attacks Are Not On Networks But On Its ‘Naive’ Participants Says ETC Contributor

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The recent 51% attack on the Ethereum Classic blockchain has again sparked the debate of what is the best way to protect the blockchain and keep it attack free. While there have been various views that have been presented over the past week, ETC contributor Tomaz Kariz has published a post on a medium that kind of defends the Ethereum Classic blockchain and states the attack is on the network participants.

Nilesh Maurya

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